Department of Arts and Cultural Management
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Browsing Department of Arts and Cultural Management by Author "Fitzsimmons Frey, Heather"
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Item Afterwards: a conversation about devising and higher education in a post-pandemic world.(2024) Fitzsimmons Frey, Heather; Hyland, Nicola; McKinnon, JamesOff Book has been a slow-burn collaboration, one which was not only delayed by the disruptions of a global pandemic, but all sorts of other ordinary human ‘dramas’: we have overcome serious illnesses, broken bones, cross-hemisphere migration, new positions, rapid restructures, resignations and budget cuts, the introduction of ‘dual delivery’ and online teaching modes and even the output of a new human. And that's just among the editors! We chose to frame this final epilogue as a series of conversations, as this feels the most appropriate reflection of our editorial process. This is a story of endless email chains, coordination across six time zones to meet via Zoom, and innumerable tangential discussions in the margins of essays. Through this, we have learnt so much about our own devising and teaching practices, but also have been challenged to shift and reshape our own assumptions about what ‘good’ and ‘bad’ devising praxes look like. Although the COVID-19 pandemic disrupted the lives of all our contributors, when we invited them to speak to this disruption and its implications, they mostly declined. Does this reflect fatigue or a lack of confidence in the future? Both of those conditions aptly express the feelings of many devisors reflected in this book: the exhaustion of doggedly working towards an uncertain something, of having the materials to create, but with little idea yet of what it will become. Talking more than doing may be the nemesis of any devising experience (although others would argue that ignoring the value of relationships is the worst offense against healthy devising). Still, as we worked to concoct a single book from all our contributors’ voices, our conversations were peppered with thoughts around the nature of devising, autonomy, care, universities and the future of devising.Item Research recast(ed): S2E5 - Who they are, not who they will be, with Robyn Ayles and Heather Fitzsimmons Frey(2022) Ekelund, Brittany; Cave, Dylan; Ayles, Robyn; Fitzsimmons Frey, HeatherToday we sat down with research duo, Robyn Ayles and Dr. Heather Fitzsimmons Frey to talk about their collaboration with some very tiny researchers. We talk about their interactive theatre project, where children are invited to be co-researchers and guide, transform and participate with the experience. This project tugs at the heartstrings, as we explore the importance of meeting kids where they’re at and considering them for who they are, not just who they are going to be. All of this conversation is seen through the lens of the Urban Wildlife project.Item Teaching devising for young audiences(2024) Fitzsimmons Frey, HeatherDevising in a post-secondary context offers the appeal of exploring ideas, issues and images that resonate with the creators. Yet, the practice of developing work for young audiences requires the student devisors to think and create for an audience that is clearly not them. But who are they? What matters to this audience? Of course, instructors who teach devising for young audiences facilitate a creative process to make a piece that draws from their students’ skills and knowledge, but experience shows them that, all too often, their students’ beliefs about children, and about theatre made for them, are limiting if not actually wrong. Thus, the process of creating work that is meaningful for young audiences – and also, for the creators – involves encouraging the student devisors to unlearn some of their assumptions about young people, and about the process of creating work for young audiences – which they generally imagine is simpler and easier than creating work for adults.Item Throw away the book: devising and higher education(2024) Fitzsimmons Frey, Heather; Hyland, Nicola; McKinnon, JamesIn the theatre world, ‘off book’ signifies a deadline in the creative process: the date by which performers are to have memorized their lines and will no longer be allowed to carry their play script – the ‘book’ – on stage. As such, Off Book makes a strangely appropriate title for a book about devised performance in higher education. In its usual context, ‘off book’ captures the tension between ephemeral, live performance and durable, authorized literature: in one sense, the book – the written play – is the essential core, the seed that gives the performance life and meaning. Yet the opposite could be equally true: an ‘on book’ performance would not really be a play at all, and an actor reciting lines out of a script in hand is not really acting. A play is only realized in, or through, a performance. We cannot really learn, or play, our part until we can put the book down and enter the stage without it.Item Up top/down low: devising and higher education in Aotearoa New Zealand and Canada(2024) Fitzsimmons Frey, Heather; Hyland, NicolaThe chapters in this book tell the stories of devised projects originating in three regions, integrating the voices of practitioners and academics who traverse across those spaces: Canada, Aotearoa New Zealand and Australia. We must acknowledge our implicit biases, as well as our own worldviews here; as editors, these three regions are where we have, between us, studied, taught and lived. This chapter explores what we perceive as a gap in the existing discourse: the relationship between devising and higher education in Canada and New Zealand.Item Youthsites : histories of creativity, care, and learning in the city.(2023) Poyntz, Stuart R.; Sefton-Green, Julian; Fitzsimmons Frey, HeatherThis book is an original study of the youth organizations in London, Toronto, and Vancouver that offer creative and arts programs mainly to youth from diverse and socially marginalized backgrounds. It describes a sector that is often not recognized, organizations that don't like being institutionalized, forms of education that exist outside the mainstream, types of aesthetic expression that often go unrecognized, and unusual learning and cultural opportunities for socially marginalized young people. Rooted in the history of community arts movements from the 1970s, Youthsites, or the non-formal youth arts learning sector, is now part of cities around the world. Technological change, shifts in educational discourses, changes in policy rhetorics, including a turn away from traditional public institutions and a decline in funding of formal public schooling have all impacted the growth of youth arts organizations. Yet there are to date no systematic studies of the history, structure, and development of this sector. Youthsites: Histories of Creativity, Care, and Learning in the City fills this gap and is the first book to develop an internationally comparative, evidence-based, structural analysis of the development of the youth arts sector. Based on an original 4-year study examining the history, priorities, and tensions within this sector between 1995 and 2015, Youthsites explores the organizations and people who are helping young people to become creators, citizens, or just themselves in times of austerity, crisis, and change.